Ashley and Benjamin

How We Met

Some people search in every which way looking for another person to be their souls mate. Obliviously rummaging through people left and right, as if maybe one person has a sign pointing arrows at them saying “THE ONE”. Searching and thinking that the harder they look the more obvious this “ONE” will be. Others deny the truth that the one they love has been waiting for them the whole time, just below their nose. Some resist relationships, others cannon ball straight into them. Me? Well it was like a magnet i would say… or more like two magnets. A magnet creates this invisible area of magnetism all around it, a magnetic field. At some point in April 2016 I stumbled upon one of these magnetic fields without knowing it. I soon found myself every where he was. The pull of this magnetic field was something i didn’t even notice at first, until I found myself stepping closer and closer to him each day. You know those people that are just attractive? Yes, the ones with the bright white perfect smiles and with charm in their big blue eyes, but also with something/everything about them that is undeniably attractive. You’re drawn into them, want to be near them, they are the irresistible few of this massive world.

… And I found one of them.

He notices everything. Every curve in my smile, to every curl in my hair. He like the yellow in my eyes and causes the pink to arise in my cheeks. He brings out everything that i like about myself, and in that same exact moment he some how makes me love all the things that I don’t.

I was born in Orange County California, studying oversees in Sydney Australia. 7,000 long miles from home only to find, meet, and fall quickly in love with Benjamin Allen Jennette. Who caught me by surprise, get this … he too was 7,000 long miles from home, born and raised in California. (I’d fly that 15 hour flight a hundred times over if it meant meeting my California love in SYDNEY.) From the moment I met him, I knew he was good, and as we stood in front of the Sydney Opera house lit with dazzling lights on our second date I knew he was forever.

how they asked

“25th of November 2017 The day I asked you to marry me”

The words I read through teary eyes and trembling hands, now knowing, this is it. Every perfect second of the day led to this moment, and it all began with a red envelope. You know me like the back of your hand Benjamin, he hands me a letter dressed in a red envelope with my initials A.P.B. like he always does. He told me “you can just hold on to this”, and within minutes I’d forgotten I was given it at all. For what I though would be a sweet and simple night with his parents who flew 15 hours to see us, was a lovingly organised day planned only for me. It began at a cafe (my favorite one at that), on the water at the Sydney Harbour. In my view my boyfriend, the Opera house and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and through his eyes, myself accompanied by the Sydney Skyline. If the night had ended there it would have been perfect, but to my surprise that was just the start. He took me by hand and walked by the Opera House, it was sunny and warm and easily noted as a “perfect day”, so he planned to take a ferry to North Sydney, entailing of a boat ride under the Sydney Harbour Bridge. His smile was brighter that day, but so was mine, and as we walked he pointed out various spots that made “us”, in a city so far from where we once lived, we had made our own home, together.

We walked through our old date spots, with sentimental views in sight. I heard a lot of “I love you’s” that day, but he loves me so well everyday that it didn’t take me by surprise one bit. As we began to walk down a set of stairs, ones we had walked down many many times before, I notice his gratefulness yet quietness. He pulls me closer as we walk along a road with the prettiest view my eyes will never tire of seeing. My eyes so lost in the view, that when I placed them back on the path I stumble into his arms. Regaining a view i’ve dreamt of seeing since i was a little girl, where he would ask me to marry him. My eyes blinking through tears, my heart beating out of my chest, I see a blanket with roses scattered on every edge, I see candles lit just for me, and as i’m walked to the center of this perfect moment he asks me to take out my little red envelope. With only three weeks left in Sydney, with the man I could not have imagined to be mine, I was living a moment I can only express to be perfect.

I open my envelope and find a letter inside, hanging on every word he wrote, and with tears dropping on the pages I knew “This is it”. Every loving word leading to these: “25th of November 2017 The day I asked you to marry me”. I look up to my favorite pair of blue eyes, with as many tears in them as my own, and with an “I love you”, the man of my dreams was down on one knee, opening a little white box, saying the words “Ashley Paige Blagdon, Will you marry me?”. The word “YES!” came out of me with a shout, the easiest yes I have ever said, so easy I believe I said it nearly 13 times. People all around us cheering, our best friends, his family, strangers even, and as he placed a gorgeously perfect ring on my left hand, all was right in the world. Of all the people on this planet, from California to Sydney, he chose me, and for that I am forever the lucky one.